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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27380008">Believing Is Only Step One</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/EternalEclipse/pseuds/EclipseMidnight'>EclipseMidnight (EternalEclipse)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, I leave that up to you, Multi, Politics, not sure whether it counts as a fix it or break it differently</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:27:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,632</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27380008</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/EternalEclipse/pseuds/EclipseMidnight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It was nineteen months after the Battle of Hogwarts, and everything was going wrong. Voldemort was dead, sure, but little had changed except the Minister's nameplate and it didn't look like anything was going to, really. </p><p>This was unacceptable.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Ron Weasley, Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>117</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fic In A Box</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Believing Is Only Step One</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hadrian_Pendragons/gifts">Hadrian_Pendragons</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“Mate, we’re playing a losing board.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>The biggest reason it worked was that no one was expecting it. But that wasn’t how it started. No, it started with six children who knew that their weapons were their hands and the sounds they made when their throats were wide and staring.</p><p>Two of them were playing by a stream. One fell in, and might have washed away if not for the other. Such small things would have cemented them together, if bigger things hadn’t already. The smaller would keep them though, which was no trivial thing.</p><p>Four of them were on a train: two in a carriage, legs too short to reach the ground while seated, and two at the door, suddenly too short to reach the luggage racks above without spellcraft. No one spoke, for fear of reality fracturing, or decompression sickness, or just because of the shakiness that was the nature of being in a magically expanded thing moving at high speed. When you were that small, you could all sit on the same seat together without pressing too near. They didn’t bother with pretending that that didn’t comfort them as they made room.</p><p>They were going to be weird children. There was no way around it, with their adult understanding and practice with magic and barely-managed traumas. They weren’t going to have the same reactions a child would have to things that went well or even things that went badly. Then again, they did have a child’s neurochemistry. Who knew what could happen?</p><p>Hedwig was flying out with her first letter towards Ottery St. Catchpole as soon as the Express landed safely in Scotland. There had been the bare bones of a plan, of course. If dealing with certain sentiments was difficult after they had set in like a blueberry stain on bleached cotton, then the goal would be to prevent them from taking root in their generation. There were many heirs to influential families with whom they were of an age, and it had been terrifying how many of them were not immune to propaganda.</p><p>But before the strategy would come the tactics. Lord Voldemort had days numbered in the single digits, not that he knew it. There were backups and contingencies, of course there were, but no one would expect them to move so quickly, and no one would think to expect a group of children at all. After all, what could an ickle little first year do?</p><p>And so they struck, using the craziness of the first weekend after classes to do it. They’d heard about the forbidden corridor, of course, everyone had, and that had made it the biggest mystery in the school. Hermione was off transfiguring an “It’s simple, really, just a flick and—” “We get it, Hermione, <em>really</em>—" ocarina while Harry and Neville made an appearance listening to the Weasley twins go on telling taller and taller tales of walking in on Fluffy.</p><p>Ron, of course, had walked off in a huff as soon as they started in on their exploits. He’d walked off so far as the Defense classroom. In between, he’d used a spell to muffle his footsteps, another to conceal a few of his facial features via illusion, and a third to make himself less noticeable overall. He walked like he knew where he was going, and everyone else was too busy to pay attention to a small student who wasn’t an obviously misguided firstie going to starve because they took a wrong staircase and never made it to the Great Hall for lunch.</p><p>He’d struck gold; Quirrell was already there. A message via protean charm later and, he just had to keep watch. He took out a notebook and a textbook and set up just around the corner. If no one cared to accost a kid who knew where he was going, they were even less likely to accost one in the middle of doing homework.</p><p>When Quirrell did not emerge for dinner, Neville came to relieve Ron. His brothers had taken his excuses easily enough earlier, but if he disappeared all day it would be noticed. Neville though, he had carefully been seen all day, and the others took Harry’s word for it that Neville had complained of a stomach ache and wasn’t feeling up to dinner.</p><p>Harry had made sure to nick a roll ‘for Neville’ early on, and left before most of the table finished eating, ostensibly to bring it up for him. And he had not lied about one thing: he <em>was</em> going to Neville. The thing about common wart cure and Selloway’s Drain Clog Dissolver was that both were entirely harmless if used for their intended purposes and were both commonly sold at apothecaries. They were utterly uninteresting, unless someone was fool enough to put them in the same space and breathe in the resulting gas. Neville had had some of the wart cure, and the Dissolver had been easy enough for Harry to make once Ron had nicked the supplies from his brothers’ potion kits.</p><p>It was a simple enough matter to combine the two and roll the resulting solution under the door. When nothing exploded and no new noise came from inside after ten minutes, they peeked through the door. Quirrell was collapsed, and the potion reaction was beginning to become visible. Harry vanished the potions and Neville hit the room with a spate of cleansing charms. And then for the moment of truth: Harry pressed his bare hands to Quirrell’s skin.</p><p>First, it just flaked off in clumps, like the worst case of eczema either of them could imagine dialed up to ten thousand. And then the burning smell began. Harry had gone for their throat first so that they wouldn’t be able to scream. That had been a calculated decision: he was quite familiar with how loud one could be when they were burning to death. The muggleborn trials had been quite public, and few people could manage a wandless flame freezing charm under pressure, especially with their families’ lives on the line if they did so. This did not prepare him for the vibrations of their chests under his hands as they tried their best to charm away his hands.</p><p>Voldemort tried to escape, of course he did. He was a shade of a man whose only purpose in life was survival. He’d live another century as a shade if that’s what he needed to be successful in his goals. But transfiguring an ocarina had not taken all week, even for an almost-twelve-year-old’s raw magical ability, and they had another contingency for him.</p><p>A Dark Lord and two Chosen Ones walk into a room. What happens next may surprise you.</p><p>Neville kept a lookout, but it was barely ten minutes until he was sure that Quirrell was dead, and Voldemort trapped in the spirit-seeking box that Hermione had enchanted. The first was shrunk and both were stuffed into Harry’s backpack. With the room clear, Neville returned to the Gryffindor common room before everyone else got back from dinner, and Harry made his way to their next stop.</p><p>Hermione had made sure that she was not the next person to leave the Great Hall, but did leave with the first wave, muttering something about a book. No one cared to notice. Perhaps it was prejudice, or perhaps it was the way she’d done her best to mimic her first year self’s overweening trust in authority in that first week, but no one questioned her either. Oh well. There’d be time to “grow out” of that later, whenever it became clear that at least some of the Hogwarts professors were culpable, because there was no world in which the premiere magic boarding school couldn’t have had some effect on widescale prejudice amongst its graduates over the course of decades or centuries.</p><p>She met Harry at the forbidden corridor. Her ocarina skills were nothing to write home about, but Fluffy was happy enough, and both of them had small bluebell flames to free them from the Devil’s Snare without actually harming the plants.</p><p>Neville’s influence. Luna and Ginny had backed him up, Ginny citing the more practical concerns of the burned plant being noticed and Luna somewhere between the same and Neville’s concern for the plant and the tiny creatures it could house.</p><p>After that, they did not need to be so careful. Harry grabbed the broom and roughed up a few of the keys while Hermione worked on cutting a hole into the door. Sure, the lock may be impassible without the correct key, but the door was just solid old wood. Simple enough a fix with the help of some magic.</p><p>The chessboard room was similarly bypassed, with the broom holding both of them high above the board. The kings watched as Hermione cut a hole in the next door, Harry working to keep them level all the while.</p><p>The troll, Harry hit with a sleeping charm. Quirrell had killed it, he knew, but he wasn’t going to kill another sentient he didn’t have to. The troll had done nothing except be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it wasn’t like he didn’t know what that felt like.</p><p>The next door was unlocked, and fire sprung up around them. They were almost there. Hermione worked on spelling them against the new fires as Harry dug into his bag. The room after held the Mirror of Erised, of course. The best place to hide the box of Voldemort; no one could ever find it there, not when they didn’t know to look for it in the first place.</p><p>Quirrell was set in the fire near the door they came in in Snape’s room on their way back out, and it didn’t take long for his flesh to begin to melt. It was a terrible smell, but nothing they hadn’t earned. They swiftly returned from whence they came, scurried up to the Gryffindor Common Room in intervals, and hurried into their rooms when they noticed the place was still mostly empty.</p><p>Quirrell’s absence may have been noticed more quickly, if not for what Ron had been up to, which was attempting to beat Fred and George at their own game. This was where their advanced spell knowledge came into play. No one expected a first year to be able to make the entire population in the Great Hall float. If pressed, Flitwick would have admitted that the basis for the prank was the same <em>wingardium leviosa</em> that the first years had been learning, though this was too advanced an application for them. They’d been learning magic for a week, and could barely lift feathers! The twins were blamed of course. How could they not be?</p><p>And so, when everyone returned to the dorms, Harry and Neville were talking quietly in a corner, and Hermione’s nose was buried deep in a book. Not a hair out of place on any of them.</p><p>That first week, actions would speak louder than words into their room of ghosts.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Yeah….yeah. So, what do we do?”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>It was nineteen months after the Battle of Hogwarts, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione were all squashed together on the loveseat in the middle of the flat they were sharing with George. He hadn’t wanted to be alone after Fred died, and it had just made sense. That they were still living together was a testament to their shared understanding of the circumstances. Some things were best left where they were.</p><p>The first thing not appearing on that list was the British Ministry of Magic. Despite the installment of Kingsley over Fudge’s political grave, not much had changed from how Death Eaters were treated after the first war. Or how the general populace was treated, because you can’t pardon eugenicists without implicit agreement with their cause, no matter how much gold they slipped you.</p><p>Ron had it easiest, in this new era. He had a non-ministry job all lined up, and no one would dare say anything too long about a pureblood doing what he could to help his family. Not when that was the kind of line the death eaters who weren’t claiming Imperius were all doing, with more success than they would have hoped. </p><p>Harry had been asked to become an auror or even a hit wizard, some kind of ministry job that they could use to raise their profile and leverage his reputation to appear to be keeping people safer. Harry had thought about it for a good couple of hours. There was a reason McGonagall had suggested similar in their fifth year, even past the edge of spiting Umbridge.</p><p>People had been <em>slightly miffed</em> when he had announced his intention to follow a more educational career instead. That evened out somewhat when fingers began pointing to Dumbledore as his mentor, and <em>of course</em> he would follow in those footsteps. Of course, many of those turned their backs in turn when they found out that Harry planned to go to muggle university to learn how to do it properly. A Mastery in an area would be enough, they told him, why not go for that? His response that he had already begun one helped little enough that he hadn’t been able to go to Diagon Alley without a disguise ever since.</p><p>But Harry knew how to handle the fickle press. It wasn’t like it was at all new to him or his friends and family. He just kept on until eventually enough people decided that he was okay, actually, nevermind that fuss before, because they did actually want to brag that their kids had been taught by <em>Harry Potter</em>.</p><p>And that yet paled in comparison to Hermione.</p><p>The Muggleborn Registration Act was still on the books. They’d at least stopped taking wands from families with nonmagical members publicly, and there were no more outwards signs of identification, but it didn’t need to, not yet. With nothing further to sway public sentiment, the sheep public continued seeing the muggleborn as other and visitors within their culture seeking to eradicate it and steal their space.</p><p>Hermione had first attempted to use their newfound status as war heroes as a segue into activism. They had all expected resistance, from the populace if not the government. Of course they had. But something like the MRA should have been a formality to overturn. A quick way to tell the population what they would and wouldn’t stand for, and signal a return to tolerance. Well, it had finally been brought in front of the Wizengamot a week ago, and it was still kicking. And some sources had warned them that it wouldn’t be long until it was kicking down their door for her.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“We make new rules.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The first response letter from Ginny and Luna came in the day that Professor Quirrell was found dead, the Monday after it had happened. Apparently it was not so unusual that a professor could go home to their families on weekends, so long as they didn’t all go at once. That’s what they had thought happened to him, or at least what the official story was. No one said anything until he missed his first class of the week. Then a search, and the body was found. The Defense curse firing off early, or so the whispers went. That made a better story for the students as long as no one learned about the investigation.</p><p>In any case, they’d been lucky that it had come with breakfast, before that can of worms fully took over the school. It was a simple thing, in the name of not committing to paper what secrets they nurtured beneath their regulation hats, but it did say that they had both returned safely and were together, and couldn’t they figure out a better system than owl post, because as much as they loved Hedwig a message would still take days?</p><p>Their first priority as all the students were questioned about Quirrell was to not appear culpable in his disappearance or stand out whatsoever—or at least beyond the usual expectations. That did not prevent Hermione from stealing away to the library for hours at a time, or for her to make them two-way mirrors. Finding the proper books took almost a week even with help, and journals would have been faster, but Ginny still had trauma and the rest was sure to pay dividends.</p><p>It also gave them the advantage of being through the initial wave of student-monitoring, so no one was reading their mail as it went out. Might as well, at that.</p><p>There was little to do in that week. The teachers were scattered far and wide with Ministry investigation and parental response to Quirrell’s death as well as the hunt for a replacement Defense professor. The older students were a gossip mill that could compete with Rita Skeeter’s column on a bad news cycle and come out on top. Even Hermione could only take so much of their whispering at the library before she pointed Madam Pince at them. It would take a bit longer for Hedwig to reach their younger friends, so they settled in.</p><p>Neville was the one who had had the idea to, with the help of a herbology tome, grow plants within their dorm. They had gotten Dean and Seamus in on it from the start, and soon enough they had gotten most of Gryffindor to participate. It had made Neville relax, which was good, but it had gotten people working together, which was even better.</p><p>Perhaps more interesting than the things they were doing were the things they weren’t. In Potions, they were turning in perfect specimens and pretending that Snape was a good professor. Harry even managed to call him “sir” without sarcasm…most of the time. It was as much as they could ask of him. In Charms and Transfiguration, they all except sometimes Hermione waited until someone to do the spell of the day properly before they did. They’d learned that intending to do a half-job with magic had some success but it took more work than doing it right, so there was also some doing spells wordless and pretending otherwise. It was good practice, no matter how much Ginny laughed at them. She’d have her turn next year, and get her just desserts. It wasn’t like she could be seen making top grades either, Ron had muttered. Luna hadn’t seemed to agree, but that wasn’t important just yet.</p><p>When they weren’t stretching their magic muscles, they were finishing in the first half of the class and turning to whichever other House was there to help. Hufflepuff welcomed it, and began mimicking it. Ravenclaw wasn’t much more difficult. Even the some of the Slytherins, particularly ones who had grown up outside the insular pureblood Death Eater circles, had let them. It was a start.</p><p>They did get looked askance by professors a lot, and their classmates were weird about it at first, and they realized that they talked more like teachers than fellow students. Adjusting to being ten or so years younger was a <em>trip. </em>They were<em> working on it.</em></p><p>Even so, eleven year olds grown with the bendable paper edges of peace were a lot easier than prickly, traumatized adults. Who would have thought?</p><p>Sure, a replacement Defense professor was found before too long. Thankfully Lockhart was still off gallivanting somewhere south of the Equator destroying minds for the sake of his ten minutes so it wasn’t him. Someone new and uninteresting. When, a month in, cloudy with an off chance of attempted murder didn’t do anything, the four of them set their eyes on bigger prizes.</p><p>In the meanwhile, Luna and Ginny had begun their two-women war on all of the children in the nearby area, in between magic review. Hedwig didn’t fly their way too often, if only to not arouse suspicion, but they talked on the mirrors twice a week without fail.</p><p>And so passed a year.</p><p>Gryffindor had served the four well, not a doubting word to be heard. Voldemort’s death would otherwise have been harder, though not impossible to orchestrate. So too would certain future events be affected by their physical separation. Though Neville, Ginny, and Luna were well used to it, Hermione, Harry, and Ron did not do well alone anymore. No, it had been the right call at the time.</p><p>The perks of having a team was that there were people to cover your weak points.</p><p>And so, Luna joined Hufflepuff. They would close ranks around their own, and she’d found that she liked having friends. It was an easy sell to the Hat, and a useful investment in the future. She wanted to learn, sure, but having good friends worth her time was what made the knowledge useful. Ravenclaw was the most decentralized house of the four by nature, and Puffs would listen better to one of their own than any outsider, even one with the name and reputation of <em>Harry Potter</em>. As for Ginny…</p><p>The Sorting Hat shouted “Slytherin!” The Great Hall caterwauled with the sounds of the evening birds, so silent were its occupants. And then, one clap, and four more, and then Gryffindor, and finally the Slytherins joined in as not to be outdone by Gryffindors in welcoming one of their own.</p><p>Well. That had been a long time in coming.</p><p>A Weasley had no business being on that side of the Great Hall, in the eyes of nearly everyone with knowledge of recent family history. Ginny didn’t seem to notice as she made herself a space wedged in with the other first years. It was easy to tell who had been steeped in what just by looking at who turned up their noses at her, and who looked confused. Conformity was the Slytherin way this early on.</p><p>It was almost too bad that Snape didn’t have an aneurism on the spot, but dealing with Slughorn for five or six more years at a minimum might actually have been worse. His fear would empower those raised to sadism, and his elitism was all the more insidious for his token ‘exceptional’ muggleborn inclusions. It was really too bad there was literally no one else. They’d just have to work through it.</p><p>Speaking of ‘there was literally no one else’, Lockhart was back. Where the barely-useful-but-inoffensive soul of most of the previous year had gone, none of them knew, which was the only reason that they didn’t stage a convenient accident for Lockhart beforehand. It was still a close vote. There was half a moment where they thought to pass on the journal that had turned up so innocently in Ginny’s school things to him, but no, this was no joyride. There was no telling how sane the basilisk was before the journal had messed with it, and it <em>was </em>a bit of Voldemort’s soul, so they’d come up with another ploy.</p><p>The first weekend of the semester included Ginny burning the thing with a controlled burst of fiendfyre in the Slytherin Common Room. It was viciously satisfying karmic justice. No more journal. No more messing with her homework, either. Cowards.</p><p>No, instead, once Ginny had reestablished herself as relatively nice and dangerous enough to keep that going, people had begun flocking to her for advice on their homework. She hadn’t bothered to hold back nearly as much as the rest of them, see. It wouldn’t help her to be seen as a normal child. She had to be the blood traitor who was better than all of the manicured purebloods. Their own shining exceptionalism. The nail that stuck out got pounded in unless it was enchanted properly, and Ginny had just the perfect media smile ready for any Slytherin who tried to go against her.</p><p>The look on Malfoy’s face after he tried to go after her and got stopped by her year mates was well worth the separation from her friends. She’d show them in a pensieve whenever they next acquired one.</p><p>Malfoy aside, she needed the Slytherin’s faith. The first time she shoved her Slytherins up to Luna’s Hufflepuffs and told them not to bite nearly wound up a mutiny from all ends. Their faults for not pushing it immediately, before the isolationist house pride programming kicked in, for all that it was at some level inevitable. There was a reason their Gryffindors weren’t involved so deeply in house unity yet, and it was called being Gryffindors, and also older students. The others were the same, just not always so outspoken about it.</p><p>It had, as a point of fact, come within inches of blows, until Luna walked right up to Ginny, smiled her dreamy smile, poked her on the cheek, and said something along the lines of, “There are still too many wrackspurts here.” And then Ginny had smiled, wrapped a hand around Luna’s shoulder and told her they were working on it. Once Hufflepuff ended up closing ranks around Ginny, they kept it up with the rest of the Slytherin by proxy of nearness.</p><p>The Slytherins? They were cats. It took time and consistency to prove that the Hufflepuff weren’t just talking a good game, but they did eventually manage to start showing up when the Hufflepuffs were there. They were impressionable firsties, after all. Easy bait to start with.</p><p>And yet, there were four houses. That covered all of two, and only in one year, even if there were a few upper years poking their noses in. It wasn’t going to be enough. They needed more.</p><p>The easy answer was to resurrect the unfortunately named DA, but Harry had yet to establish himself in defense like he had the last time. They were loathe to rely on someone they didn’t know, so when they made a new group, it was more inter-house study sessions than a club. Probably better in the long-term, but still in need of short-term facilitators, which, again, couldn’t really be Harry unless he treaded on his fame. Which…was worth a go. At least Gryffindors began to get involved, but they didn’t want it to stay entirely in house this time.</p><p>When Harry started hosting these study sessions in unused classrooms, it was only the Gryffindors. Who else would it have been? And yet, it took a mere two sessions for Ravenclaws to turn up, acting nearly as catlike as the Slytherins, because they weren’t getting good defense lessons either, and at that point they were the more immune to the politics of the Houses than Lockhart’s self-congratulatory indulgent nonsense and profit machine. <em>Stonks</em>! Was all Luna had to say about it.</p><p>Yet Defense was only one subject, and no one was going to listen to Hermione go off about the minutiae of the Goblin War of 1806 any more than they would Binns, and at that point the Ravenclaws wandered off, looking at what Hufflepuff and Slytherin would be up to to see if it was more useful. ‘What they were doing’ would be quite a lot, between Luna and Ginny. In a word, they got adopted. Hard.</p><p>This wasn’t enough, and they knew it. More had to be done. Neville was the first Gryffindor to make a move. He was known to be meeker and quieter, more like a missorted Hufflepuff than anything—until he made the stupid mistake of joining a group of Slytherins as a Gryffindor without fellow Gryffindors to back him up. He was the subject of much staring—and then he went off about Herbology, and was the subject of even more scrutiny. But the good kind. The kind that meant that Luna poked his other cheek and asked about plants reacting to ambient Nargle population, and that he helped point the firsties find the right resources for their mandrake papers.</p><p>With the study group going on with the upper years in Defense, he was able to do more than just firsties. Those plants that most of Gryffindor House had been growing for a year now made it in, to a Defense session and they started herbology study sessions as well, run by Neville and a few people he dragged in to it from a mix of Houses. It helped that the Twins could be bribed to prank everyone with plants that only the study group members knew how to get out of. When they were seen helping everyone, it did generate enough goodwill to be more of a group effort than the Gryffindor-led one of the Defense program, or the first years’ consortium.</p><p>Once they started, it was easier to keep going. As ever, the easiest way into the hearts and minds of their fellow students was helping them do their homework for them. Nobody questioned his motives.</p><p>That state of things lasted until the next Herbology exam, in which all the Houses saw marked improvement because of Neville except Gryffindor, much to their chagrin. And so Harry followed Neville, and the other second and first years were not far behind. A role model was not a terrible thing.</p><p>The Gryffindors and Slytherins sticking together in the same space without attempted hexing was the kicker, even still. When the Gryffindors joined and the Slytherins let it happen so long as they could lord their prior membership and founder status over them, they knew they had won the first battle in the war. This was only the embers of House Unity, but from every spark a wildfire.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“And how are we going to do that?”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Their friends had also taken the time and moved on, in their own ways.</p><p>Neville had come into quite a sum of money that his parents had left for him upon his majority. He’d also seen the way the wind was blowing, and when it came out that old Tom hadn’t survived the war, he’d used that money to purchase the Leaky Cauldron. His grandmother hadn’t been happy about it, but she’d let it go once she had convinced him to hire someone else to run it. He’d turned the question over to the DA, and Katie Bell and Hannah Abbott stepped up.</p><p>Maybe she knew how important that location was and would continue to be. Maybe she had more important things to do, like finding Neville a good match to have children who didn’t use chlorophyl to survive and carry on the line. Into what kind of future, he wanted to ask, but he did know better. Better she remained distracted by all of that shiny nonsense. He wasn’t getting married, not as things stood. Not when she’d never accept who he had to offer.</p><p>He had also stepped into the political realm that had been barred to Hermione. Managing the DA that last year had stood him in good stead towards building his confidence and ability to convincingly lie to people’s faces. A few investments in the proper places later, and he was becoming their go-to person for information.</p><p>Luna and Ginny had had to finish their final year, and thus bore witness to the ways that Hogwarts recovered from the war. It was a month into the school year before the Great Hall was clear enough to eat, the first repairs having focused on the dormitories, and in that time the Houses had eaten food mostly in their own common spaces. There was a great deal less inter-house mixing.</p><p>Gryffindor was glad to be proven right, but it had also lost the greatest number of students, and everyone had someone who was gone. They had mostly turned to each other’s shoulders. Ravenclaw was going in circles trying to figure out what had exactly happened, with increasing frustration. Luna was left alone for once, which only went to say how isolated it was. Slytherin was always something of a mystery, and they were more isolated than ever. Hufflepuff had also closed ranks, except the ones who had been part of or adjacent to the DA. All the Houses were licking their wounds and commiserating their losses, but they weren’t doing so together. And the professors were too busy dealing with the repairs and the shaken faith in the prospective students in their sparse free time to give more than lip service to Hogwarts Unity when it would be most necessary.</p><p>After, Luna had gone on to become a magizoologist. She made the Leaky Cauldron her base of operations, which did good to obscure the muggleborns who were uncomfortable and trying to leave, still. Hermione’s battles were intentionally quite public. She had a book going, but it was utterly incomprehensible to anyone who wasn’t her, and that was probably for the best.</p><p>Ginny had settled going for the Quidditch career she had always wanted. She’d had to be argued into it, but it had proven a good distraction from the rest. She made loud statements when there wasn’t anything newsworthy before one of Luna’s runs, to give some cover. She wore patches of the political causes they were all working for, giving them airtime in an entertainment context even when she got fined for it. Molly Weasley hadn’t had anything good to say about the League officials that night. She was fine. She wouldn’t be the canary in the mine, the first ones to go. But that wasn’t enough. It could never be.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Magic, of course. And those things that might as well be magic if you do them right. Lots of talking.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>They were still fighting a war, however, and the clubs and study groups were only the ally-gathering stage. It was low-stakes enough. People are people who have the same questions about exams and homework and one day you might have the answer, and the next you might be asking the questions. This was the whole point of the exercise.</p><p>What, then, when you added other age groups and expecte them to work together? The second years had joined to make it a competition for who could teach the first years more. Then the third years joined in, critiquing the first and second years, and it all almost went to hell. It had not been easy to stop the splintering into House groupings there, but some threats and another show of fire said that it only counted if you taught things to the other Houses. All the other Houses. And it was the Hufflepuff who were the worst offenders, even.</p><p>They never brought in too many of the upper years, the club being seen as a kid’s fleeting bad idea that would break back down into House norms eventually, but as a year passed, and then three, they had successfully brought in each group of first years. Now, with the oldest staring their OWLs in the face, the thing was run by actual mini-adults.</p><p>These messes were mini-adults. Terrifying.</p><p>These messes included a number of the heirs to the hereditary side of the Wizarding Government though, and there was a great deal to be said for pre-empting that. It might be classist turned eugenicist nonsense, but if it could work in their favor to use it temporarily, these kids were not the worst the system brought to bear against them. Even so, the current generation was only so powerful, not when their families were alive and they were all minors save Harry. Say what you will for the relentless and meaningless deaths in war, but it had brought their agemates to prominence earlier, something that would be rather helpful at the present. The Muggleborn Registration Act wasn’t on the books yet, but someone had to do something for the werewolves, and the goblins, and the vampires, and the lack of equality of opportunities for muggleborns that perpetuated itself anyway.</p><p>There was no war, not like it was. Perhaps, perhaps, it would have served their purposes. They slipped quietly into sixth year, telling themselves not to go gentle into the dark night, that they were not yet done.  Even as they destroyed Riddle’s ring, they were not done. Even as they tracked down the snake, they were not done. There was no ‘it would have been enough for us’ here.</p><p>But their hope would not die. They wanted better. No, they Wished better.</p><p>And then, a Ravenclaw third year, a well-liked muggleborn girl whose deathly allergy to peanuts had led to the voluntary resolution for the restriction of peanut and peanut-derived products being marched to the House Elves by a multi-House contingent, didn’t come back to school after winter break.</p><p>At first, this caused a minor outbreak of concern. She had had health concerns. Was she okay? What if she was in a hospital somewhere? What if she was in a nonmagical hospital for something that could be fixed with potions? Shouldn’t someone have checked on her?</p><p>The verdict returned, with a distinctly familiar signature. Jenny Morrow had been expelled for “using magic in front of muggles”. Further reading revealed that she had been using a spell to test for peanut contamination in a gift in her own home with only her immediate family present. Her wand had been broken, and all of their memories had been erased. She was also dead now from exposure to peanuts not treated quickly enough, and the family under the scrutiny of Child Services because none of them remembered the deathly allergy that was writ loud and clear on her medical records.</p><p>There was rage. What was the point in time travel if the same things kept happening? Grim vindication. It was a systemic problem, not just the war, and they were right. Fear. What if after all this they still couldn’t stop it? Resolve. This may not be the outcome they wanted, but it was one they could use.</p><p>Harry Potter may have laid as low as he could, making good grades and avoiding being drawn into Triwizard Tournament controversy by the skin of his teeth. He hadn’t lashed out at the teachers who still occasionally tried to kill him, or the rest of the nonsense of the fickle Wizarding World. But he was still <em>famous</em>. So he stood up and stirred the pot.</p><p>“This is wrong,” he said. And, “This didn’t need to happen.” And, “Jenny Morrow just tried to keep herself safe, in a way that didn’t actually risk any of you, and you would see her dead or worse.” And, “If you truly think this is right, expel me too.”</p><p>And, while Fudge chewed over the political implications of having <em>Harry Potter’s </em>wand taken and broken for inflammatory speech, a movement began. Not because of his words, not alone, he had just jammed in the first wedge. Pretty, innocent, dead Jenny Morrow made a picture-perfect martyr. She was well-known and well liked, someone who would do the riddle door for anyone having trouble and sometimes just for fun, and who never quite understood Herbology despite how well she did in Potions. There was a funny anecdote about her nearly losing fingers to juvenile mandrakes despite knowing all the best ways to handle their teeth in hearing potions. She’d learned to handle them properly in one of Neville’s groups. She was one of them. Also important, as her story came to prominence, so too were other stories coming out. Lilies left in places, chronically sabotaged potions that sometimes proved deadly in Vertic Alley and Knockturn apothecaries, disappearances that could not be solved by spellwork, to workplace discrimination and name calling.</p><p>As the government hemmed and hawed, the effects rippled through Hogwarts.</p><p>See, there were some benefits to being a leader like Dumbledore was. He was seen as an authority, someone above them, with greater strength and wisdom and experience that they all ought to respect. When he said something, people sat up and listened. When there was a tragedy, they looked to him for support.</p><p>Dumbledore looked troubled as he gave his speech, to be sure. “An outstanding young soul, gone too soon,” he said of Morrow, “whose death was a tragedy and a loss to us all.” But no note of how it was a <em>preventable</em> tragedy, nor one of how it had been indirectly caused by her exile and subsequent Obliviation. Perhaps he didn’t think he was in a strong enough space to take on the Ministry. Perhaps he just had other concerns, not knowing that Voldemort was dead.</p><p>It didn’t matter. Not finding the support they were looking for from the Headmaster, it fell upon the students to do that themselves too.</p><p>Harry was an easy sell. The ‘Boy Who Lived’, he might be, but he was also a friend. He taught and oversaw many of the Defense-oriented study groups, even for the few students older than him who had joined. He clearly knew what he was doing, and had so earned the respect and appreciation of his fellows. He had also been the first to make a stink, and say what most of them were thinking, with the power that meant his want was still at his side. Even those who had been indoctrinated against muggleborns had been taught to respect power, and they mostly saw Harry, and knew Jenny, and sometimes that could be enough.</p><p>Not that Harry did anything alone, and he made that clear. Ginny was the first to step up. She’d made for an even stronger Slytherin leader than Harry did for anyone with how clearly she had had to mark her intelligence and power from the start. She’d impressed the other Houses, and with the study groups they all knew her too. Without the fear of Voldemort, since he was still <em>gone</em> even if the Dark Marks hadn’t quite faded all the way, they’d been a little more open to the other doors in society.</p><p>When Ginny added her wand to the mix, so too did Luna, and the Hufflepuffs to follow. Clannishness hadn’t been discouraged so much as extended to the rest of the school who would prove over the years to respect their efforts in turn.</p><p>The Ravenclaws were there almost before Harry, of course. Once it became clear that everyone else was sticking together with them it was like the final ingredient was tossed into the potion. It was one thing to be tentatively united against their teachers, and quite another to be united against a governmental position.</p><p>And yes, perhaps this was too good to be true. Perhaps it would fracture under pressure. But this had been the entire goal of the last six years, and they’d <em>earned</em> this. Plus, Dumbledore wouldn’t see it coming. They weren’t his army anymore.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Okay. If you think you can do it, I’m in.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Hope was its own kind of magic. When their collective fear began to outweigh their hope, and they started seeing the same on the faces of those who had been fighting along with them, they knew something was going to have to give.</p><p>The flat that George now shared with Harry, Ron, and Hermione wasn’t big enough to host the others overlong, but being seen going there by anyone watching was a good enough excuse. They took down the wards and apparated away, out to the familiar dark landscape of Forest of Dean. It was better to be away from everyone in case things went wrong, and if they went <em>right</em> none of this would matter.</p><p>There were a number of theories of time travel. It was an observable effect that the time dust used in time turners would allow the user to go back, but that anything that had been done by them before turning the hourglass was already done. And this was the commonly used theory of time. Some even cited the case of a woman whose own experiment jaunting back four hundred years had failed entirely as further evidence. But Harry thought, and Hermione agreed, that this didn’t have to be the case.</p><p>Wish magic, or accidental magic, didn’t seem beholden to the same rules of magic that wanded magics did. Or at least, that they thought it did. Harry had made food appear in his cupboard when the Dursleys hadn’t fed him, amongst other things meant to be impossible. So, it stood to reason that strong enough wish magic could do the trick.</p><p>They did not fear a quiet death in a forest. At the very least, they would have gone down swinging.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Maybe in the past there won’t be quite so many wrackspurts. You can’t see the sky for them now.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Nineteen months after their graduation, it was hard to say that things the second time around were going <em>better</em>, exactly. Sure, Voldemort hadn’t been there to get a lot of the initial legislation through, nor to make bigotry as accessible and by certain demographics required.</p><p>But those attitudes had existed long before Voldemort gave them a megaphone. Delores Umbridge was still an Undersecretary to the Minister, and bribes in the right pockets meant that a lot of her vitriolic and discriminatory werewolf legislation did eventually pass muster. Ron thought of Greyback swiping her brother over it, and Harry of his godson who might no longer be, and Ginny of Lavender Brown at the Battle of Hogwarts and her body four months later because she was a werewolf and nothing else had mattered to the courts. She hadn’t deserved it.</p><p>History wasn’t exact, but it took up form poetry like it was training for the Olympics. The six of them had so far not been bitten, although Neville had come close once. Harry was pretty sure Remus wasn’t doing so well though there was little enough he could do to help past getting him away, which was already done. The look on his face when he realized how serious Harry was about having him away, even though he’d had to play dirty with the memories of his father and godfather, was one he’d never forget.</p><p>Ron had had a much easier time convincing Bill to relocate with Fleur and Gringotts. Much easier.</p><p>And okay, sure, Bellatrix Lestrange and her husband and brother in law were all still in Azkaban. That level of insanity had not managed to ravage itself on the muggleborns that were protesting all through the streets of Diagon and any other major magical thoroughfare they could get to. They’d even delayed the Hogwarts Express by six hours this year by barricading off the platform from the muggle end, and then standing in front of the train.</p><p>Dumbledore wouldn’t approve of the train killing innocent muggleborns. They were lucky the man was such a soft touch, and that they could play off his desiccated guilt for being a reformed bigot. He’d had to <em>live</em> with that autobiography, now.</p><p>Dumbledore might be able to make such decisions regarding the state of the train, but there were plenty of other stories coming out about dead and Obliviated muggleborns. Some older than the first war. Others, happening in front of their eyes. It made them sullen. And, when the assaults and murders were not prosecuted, it made them angry.</p><p>And yet, there was hope they six had never really felt except as spite. It had been a question if souls like Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe, and Gregory Goyle would return to the influence of their parents as soon as they were away from the study groups. And not just the Slytherins—Hufflepuff had as many who were influenced by their other groups out of school. Ernie Macmillan had been a particular question of Harry’s, Susan one of Neville’s, and Hermione had kept an eagle eye on Justin Finch-Fletchley. And yes, there had been some bumps in the path, and a few hexings to go around, but they were pretty sure that they had them in the end, without any embarrassing forehead pimples.</p><p>Luna helped, of course. Luna always helped. It only terrified the people who understood what was going on when Ginny first kissed Luna’s hand in public and kept holding on through the rest of their trip through the alley, Neville smiling after them with the amusement and ease of long love.</p><p>When Harry did the same with Ron, it made tabloid covers, and the three of them made a game out of it whenever the news cycle was getting too slow and was being more propaganda-y than usual. It had been long enough to be entirely comfortable with how these things worked, and it was even nice, sometimes, to be able to be in public and acknowledged together.</p><p>It did help that the younger crowd, being indoctrinated in such a different way, was generally more interested in these tabloids than breaking people out of Azkaban, and the world was better off for it.</p><p>Still, it wasn’t as if they could just <em>Wish</em> the world to be a better place, no matter how much easier it would have made their lives. No shoddy time travel, for one. But it did give them one big ace up their sleeve.</p><p>One of the reasons that society as it was had lasted so long was that intent magic self-perpetuated what people expected out of it. They might not be able to wish magic the world to be better, but they could help weaponize the widespread discontent into something that could break down the generations of magic that had come before.</p><p>At noon, when the latest and greatest Wizengamot session for what was to be done with those hooligans rioting in the streets  was meant to reconvene after a short lunch break, the beginning bell didn’t ring. Instead, a distinctive owl brought in a list of demands. The first on the list? Representation for the Wizarding population by making equal the percent of muggle-raised wizards in the UK to the percent of those same sitting on the Wizengamot.</p><p>It was just as likely someone would figure out the trick of it and use it to deny them, but Hermione had enjoyed writing it.</p><p>In the meanwhile, one of the cornerstones of their revolution was that it was self-perpetuating. As long as the adults kept sending their children to Hogwarts, the upper years would force feed the new students Hogwarts Unity, even if they no longer knew why. It was Tradition, and also stymied Dumbledore for all that he tried to take credit later on. Didn’t he realize that that wouldn’t help if anyone believed him?</p><p>Alas. The work was never done.</p><p>None of them really fit the mold for Minister for Magic. The Weasleys were too controversial with the bigots who looked down their noses for them being ‘blood traitors’, though with two pureblood bloodlines coming together it was hard to know where the label had come from. It had just been another thing they were all used to, in the end, but it would have been interesting. Neville was too much an heir to the old system to be more than a hand behind the scene. He could buy a minister, but not be one. Luna’s reputation did her no favors, and neither did Hermione’s blood. Harry was too much a public figure to be a useful one. And who did that leave?</p><p>They didn’t have to do it alone anymore though. They brought it to the group. A few suggested petitioning the muggle Prime Minister for help. A few others suggested names. Eventually, Cedric Diggory was the one they settled on. Popular, older enough to be more established, sympathetic, and could be convinced to listen to them.</p><p>Elections were coming up. There was another candidate, clearly a lower-to-mid-ranked death eater. They could not wish him well. They had a world to save, and some hope that this time they would be able to.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“You heard her, let’s destroy some wrackspurts!”</em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you enjoyed this! It was an interesting time to write. A lot of it was me working through 2020. I blame any deviations from canon on the fact that it's been five years since I last wrote HP.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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